Saturday, November 4, 2017

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Millennials, "Communism sounds pretty chill"

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Millennials, "Communism sounds pretty chill"

LATEST MADNESS COMING FROM THE MODERN WORLD

‘This report clearly reveals a need for educating our youth on the dangerous implications of socialist ideals’

According to the latest survey from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a D.C.-based nonprofit, one in two U.S. millennials say they would rather live in a socialist or communist country than a capitalist democracy.

What’s more, 22% of them have a favorable view of Karl Marx and a surprising number see Joseph Stalin and Kim Jong Un as “heroes.”
Really, that’s what the numbers show.

“Millennials now make up the largest generation in America, and we’re seeing some deeply worrisome trends,” said Marion Smith, executive director of the organization. “Millennials are increasingly turning away from capitalism and toward socialism and even communism as a viable alternative.”
But do they even know what it is?
The survey, which was conducted by research and data firm YouGov, found that millennials are the least knowledgable generation on the subject, with 71% failing to identify the proper definition of communism.
Smith explained that this “troubling turn” highlights pervasive historical illiteracy across the country and “the systemic failure of our education system to teach students about the genocide, destruction, and misery caused by communism since the Bolshevik Revolution one hundred years ago.”
Other findings include the belief held by 53% of millennials that America’s economic system works against them, which is the same percentage in the prior study. Meanwhile, 66% of Gen Z, ages 16-20, say the system works for them.
When it comes to the wealth divide, Americans seem to be on the same page, with 80% saying it’s a serious issue, up from 78% a year ago. They also mostly agree (68%) that the highest earners don’t pay their fair share in taxes.
“This report clearly reveals a need for educating our youth on the dangerous implications of socialist ideals.” Smith said. “We will continue to work with educators to build curriculum to address this important need.”

Woman transforms herself into creepy human barbie doll

Per Barbie’s instructions, I enter Kamasutra, a brightly lit Ukrainian version of an Indian restaurant. Imagine a blind date, with all the attendant “Does she look like her picture?” jitters, multiplied by the queasy fear that she does look like her picture. If you saw the pictures I saw, you would understand. You would know that meeting Valeria Lukyanova is the closest you will come to an alien encounter.
Her improbable looks—the Margaret Keane peepers, the head quizzically cocked like a sunflower too heavy for its stem, the plasticky skin and wasp waist—reached the West when her self-shot home videos
began drawing gawkers to YouTube. The Western media were quick to dub her the “Human Barbie,” but Valeria was hardly the first Homo sapiens to willingly make herself look like a doll—she wasn’t even the first to earn the moniker: Some tabloid-damaged Brit laid claim to it a few years back. Still, where others had dabbled, she went for broke. However odd her own view of perfection, she appeared to have achieved it. Valeria wasn’t in on the Barbie branding. She preferred to call herself Amatue, a name she claimed had appeared to her in a dream. CONTINUE

Artificial Intelligence may replace humans’ & become new form of life – Stephen Hawking

One day robots could entirely edge out human beings and become a new life form that is even capable of replicating itself, Stephen Hawking has warned, once again predicting a rather grim future for humankind. “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether,” the renowned physicist told Wired magazine, as cited by the Cambridge News. “If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI
that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans,” Hawking added. However, humanity itself has already reached “the point of no return” and may destroy itself first, the 75-year-old academic predicts. “Our earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing.” READ MORE

Witchcraft and Occultism On the Rise in America

EXCERPT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
On a Wednesday evening last week, I sat in on a class called “Witchcraft 101: Curses, Hexes and Jinxes,” at Catland, a fashionable occult boutique in Bushwick, Brooklyn. More than a dozen people, most of them young women, sat in folding chairs in the store’s black-walled event space. The instructor was one of Catland’s co-owners, Dakota Bracciale, a charismatic, foul-mouthed 28-year-old former M.A.C. makeup artist dressed in flowing black, with a beard and long, lavender nails. “If you’re not ready to admit that the universe is chaos, I’m not sure how far you’re going to go,” Bracciale said to the class, describing witchcraft as a way to exercise power in a world without transcendent moral rules, a

supernatural technology for taking care of yourself when no one else will. Witchcraft, Bracciale said, lets you be the “arbiter of your own justice.” I suspect that this assumption of chaos — the sense that institutions have failed and no one is in charge — helps explain the well-documented resurgence of occultism among millennials. Attempts at spell-casting are obviously not unique to today’s young people; the Washington writer and hostess Sally Quinn just published a book in which she boasts about hexing the renowned magazine editor Clay Felker, my former journalism professor, before his death from cancer. Still, magic and witchcraft have a renewed cachet, one that seems related to our current climate of political and cultural breakdown. CONTINUE